The present invention relates to high speed classification systems, and more particularly to an acousto-optical processor for providing a Fourier transform power spectrum which is detected in a detector array, digitized and classified in a digital classifier.
Presently, the Fourier transform is one of the most powerful transforms which can be used as the input to classifiers for the classification of signals. Computer processing compatibility requires the signal to be in digital form. Present systems first digitize the radar signal, then perform the digital Fourier transform, extract the appropriate coefficients and perform the classification. Analog to digital converters are required which are bandwidth limited such that wide bandwidth radar signals can only be processed with difficulty. Such converters are costly, complex and large in size.